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Told America was under attack, President George W Bush decided he needed to project strength and calm and not bolt from a Florida classroom where he was reading to children as crisis and confusion began to spread on September 11, 2001, an independent commission said.

Initially Bush was advised by an aide that a small plane had hit the World Trade Centre.

As the real dimensions of the attack became clear with terrorist strikes in New York and Washington, the commission said today that Bush told Vice President Dick Cheney: "Sounds like we have a minor war going on here. I heard about the Pentagon. We're at war ... somebody's going to pay."

Cheney, in a White House bunker, issued several orders for US fighter jets to shoot down threatening aircraft - unaware that all four hijacked planes had already crashed.

Cheney at one point believed incorrectly that his orders had resulted in the shoot-down of aircraft.

Details of Bush's and Cheney's reactions and their decisions were contained in a report from the bipartisan commission investigating the September 11 attacks.

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Based on interviews, notes and documents, the report offers the most complete picture yet of how national leaders dealt with the nation's worst terrorist attack.

Bush lingered in the classroom for five to seven minutes as the children read. The Secret Service was anxious to move him to a safer location "but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door".

"The president told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis," the report said.

"The national press corps was standing behind the children in the classroom; he saw their phones and pagers start to ring. The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."

Thirty minutes after he walked into the classroom, Bush was in a motorcade rushing to the airport, and officials were undecided where he should go.

As Air Force One climbed into the sky, the report said, the objective "was to get up in the air - as fast and as high as possible - and then decide where to go".

After two hijacked airliners hit the World Trade Centre, the Secret Service tightened White House security. Cheney was rushed to an underground tunnel leading to a shelter.

Cheney and Bush held a series of telephone calls. The vice president asked what instructions should be given to the pilots of combat planes being scrambled over Washington.

Bush said he authorised that hijacked planes be shot down.

Cheney's command post received word at 10.02am that a plane, presumably hijacked, was heading for Washington. It was United Flight 93 which crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside at 10.03am.

The White House was unaware of the crash and was told the plane was still bearing down on Washington.

Sometime between 10.10am and 10.15am, a military aide said the aircraft was 130km out and Cheney was asked for authority to shoot down the plane.

He issued the order, the commission said.

Minutes later, the military aide reported that the plane was 100km out and Cheney again was asked for authorisation. Again, he said yes.

White House deputy chief of staff Joshua Bolten, at the conference table with Cheney, suggested that the vice president contact Bush and confirm his authorisation.

Cheney called the president and got the confirmation, the commission said.

Cheney's group received word that a plane was down in Pennsylvania, and people in the conference room wondered if it had been shot down at Cheney's direction.

About 10.30am, officials with Cheney began receiving reports of another hijacked plane, eight to 16km out. Cheney issued yet another order to engage the aircraft but it turned out to be a Medevac helicopter and was not fired upon.

In most cases, the commission said, the chain of command in authorising the use of force runs from the president to the secretary of defence and from the secretary to military commanders.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was briefed by Cheney at 10:39am that he had been authorised by Bush to instruct fighters to shoot down hijacked planes.

"And it's my understanding they've already taken a couple of aircraft out," Cheney told Rumsfeld, according to the commission.

Rumsfeld replied, "We can't confirm that. We're told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that they did it."